Nigeria anti-corruption agency is to intensify investigations into politicians seeking sensitive public office and business leaders, it says. Nigeria is to hold presidential and state elections next year. EFCC head Malam Nuhu Ribadu said it had recovered $5bn and convicted 82 people in the past two years. The commission has recently produced a report on the activities of Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, accusing him of embezzlement and fraud. The BBC's Alex Last says that as elections approach next year, the agency's role is becoming ever more important in a country ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world. Despite huge oil revenues, there's a lack of basic infrastructure, and tens of millions live in poverty. The EFCC has pledged to stop corrupt politicians running for office, but at the moment a huge political battle is under way between the president, who stands down next year, and Mr Abubakar, who is one of the leading contenders for the top job. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk

Sen. Joe Lieberman targets the political center in a new television ad that claims he's put partisanship aside on vital issues such as saving jobs for Connecticut. The Lieberman campaign launched the ad after his anti-war challenger Ned Lamont began airing a commercial last week criticizing Lieberman's support for the Iraq war. The three-term incumbent is reaching out to moderates and Republicans in his independent re-election bid after losing to Lamont in last month's Democratic primary. A narrator in the 30-second spot touts Lieberman's work on the environment, civil rights and helping to protect jobs at a submarine base in the state. The Lamont camp scoffed at Lieberman's claims. ``Senator Lieberman is looking at his record through rose-colored glasses,'' said Lamont spokeswoman Liz Dupont-Diehl. ``He's very selective about what he's choosing to emphasize.'' ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6072969,00.html

Western societies are losing their souls to scientific rationality and frightening believers in the developing world who still fear God, Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday during an open-air Mass in Germany. Benedict, on the second day of a visit to his native Bavaria, said that spreading the good news of Jesus Christ is more important than all the emergency and development aid that rich churches such as those in Germany give to poor countries. "People in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess, but at the same time, they are frightened by a form of rationality that totally excludes God from man's vision, as if this were the highest form of reason," he said. The pope also stressed the role of faith in fighting AIDS "by realistically facing its deeper causes," indirectly confirming the Roman Catholic Church's view that premarital abstinence and marital fidelity are the way to combat sexually transmitted diseases. About 250,000 faithful, many ...http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060911-124018-9820r.htm

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to keep production levels unchanged, the group said after its meeting today in Vienna, setting aside concern that prices have tumbled 17 percent in two months. Chakib Khelil, Algeria's oil minister, said OPEC had decided to maintain its quotas for production. The group will ``watch the market very closely,'' he said. OPEC, which supplies 40 percent of the world's crude, has kept its output target at 28 million barrels a day since July 2005 in a bid to ease record prices. Ministers from member countries, including Saudi Arabia, Libya, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates, said they would keep production unchanged at the meeting. ``If prices fall to between $60 to $55 a barrel, they will start expressing concern and talking about a cut, and that alone will send prices up again,'' John Hall, the managing director of John Hall Associates Ltd., a British consulting firm, said in an interview in Vienna. ``...http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFOvEc0dPM6M&refer=worldwide_news

The nations of the world joined Monday in solemn remembrance of Sept. 11 — but for many, resentment of the United States flowed as readily as tears.Critics say Americans have squandered the goodwill that prompted France's Le Monde newspaper to proclaim "We are all Americans" that somber day after the attacks, and that the Iraq war and other U.S. policies have made the world less safe in the five years since.Heads bowed in moments of silence for the 3,000 killed in the attacks on New York and Washington — while a top al-Qaeda leader issued new warnings in a videotape. And dissident voices brushed the portrait of a planet that has traded in civil liberties and other democratic rights in its war on terror.Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — an advocate of closer ties with Washington — had veiled criticism of the United States, saying: "The ends cannot justify the means."...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-09-11-sept11-word_x.htm?csp=34

William Parsons was in high school when the twin towers fell. Now, the 19-year-old Army private sits atop an Afghan hill, eyes alert for al-Qaida and machine gun at the ready. ``The attacks are part of what made me decide to join,'' said the blue-eyed and sunburned Parsons, from Silver Spring, Md. ``But this is really difficult. It's the hardest thing I have done in my life.'' With images of the burning World Trade Center still vivid, Parsons recalled going into the recruitment office Sept. 27, 2005, straight out of high school to become the first in his family to join the U.S. Army. Parsons and other soldiers from the Fort Drum, N.Y.-based 10th Mountain Division are in eastern Kunar province's Korangal Valley, where U.S. commanders believe al-Qaida hatched the Sept. 11 plot. ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6072958,00.html